From an old resort in Slovakia

When you invite people to see what you've seen they don't always want to see it.

It's true there are far more insects in the world than people, and that if you ride a bicycle with your mouth open through the countryside of Lithuania you have a good chance of swallowing a nearly extinct species of bee.

There are two grocery stores in Julenc, Slovakia. One is shiny, new and bright and is Slovakian. The other is old, a little grimy, and Hungarian. The town was Hungarian for a thousand years and only became Slovakian in 1993.

Somewhere in Poland, between Warsaw and Krakow, it occurs to me that I'm riding through the epicenter of the horror of the 20th century. But the villages are so peaceful, full of old people who shuffle along by the road carrying sacks of potatoes and a loaf of bread, like nothing good or bad ever happened.

In Bobolice, Poland, Margaret gives me a ride to the market for beer. I buy 14 cold bottles and bring them back to the camp for the boys to drink. By the time I've taken a shower they've drunk them all.

Chet snores but Tom snores more. No one pitches a tent near either one of them. The women say that all the men want to talk about is sex, but sex is also what all the women talk about.

Never take the first left by the red church. You're bound to get lost. It's the second left you want.

Riding through the thunderstorm toward Bratislava, cold, wet and miserable, wishing I'd never made this trip, I console myself with the idea that rain is never old fashioned or out of date.

There's something unsettling about a half-filled swimming pool, a red clay tennis court choked with weeds, billiard cue sticks whose tips have been shaved off, and the heads of animals shot by a billionaire hunter and mounted as trophies in the game room of the lodge he abandoned.

Some people open their mouths and emit light. Some people open their mouths like they're coffin lids. Some people have emotional freedom and some people have tattoos, and some people have both.

How awful silence is to some people. Like a black and white photograph of a half-filled swimming pool full of bugs and mud in a abandoned resort in the foothills of what used to be Hungary. How beautiful the same swimming pool is to other people.